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Hebrew Grammar
Hebrew is written from right to left in horizontal lines. Some letters (kaf, mem, nun, fe and tzadi) have a final form (sofit), which is used when they appear at the end of a word, these are shown in the table below the normal form. There are no separate numerals in Hebrew, instead standard western numerals (1, 2, 3, etc) are used. Some letters have numerical values. Long vowels can be indicated by the letters alef, vav, and yod. Short vowels are not usually marked, except in the Bible, poetry and books for children and foreign learners. The Hebrew alphabet consists of the following letters: Modern Israeli pronunciation Hebrew vowel points *Historically, the consonants bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, pe, and tav each had two sounds: one hard (plosive consonant), and one soft (fricative consonant), depending on the position of the letter and other factors. When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by a central dot called dagesh, while the soft sounds lack a dagesh. *''alef'', he, vav and yod are consonants that can sometimes fill the position of a vowel. vav and yod in particular are more often vowels than they are consonants. *''shin'' and sin are two separate phonemes written with the same letter. They are not mutually allophonic. When vowel diacritics are used, the two phonemes are differentiated with a shin-dot or sin-dot; the shin-dot is above the upper-right side of the letter, and sin-dot is above the upper-left side of the letter. *In Israel's general population, many consonants have merged to the same pronunciation. Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the formation of the verbs, nouns and the genitive construct, which is called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are often combined with hyphens. Hebrew has only the definite article, "ha-". In smikhut, only the main noun (that is the noun to which the other nouns connect) can receive the article. The two main parts of the Hebrew sentence are the subject and the predicate. They are adjusted to each other in gender and person. The subject always receives the definite article, unless it is a pronoun or a name. Other parts of the Hebrew sentence are the direct object and complements to any noun. Unlike English, complements follow the noun, rather than precede it, and also like the verb they follow the subject's gender, person and article. The Hebrew grammar distinguishes between various kinds of indirect objects, according to what they specify. Thus, there is a division between objects for time, place, reason and many others. Additionally, Hebrew distinguishes between various kinds of verbless fragments, also according to their use (elaboration, exclamation, approach, disclosing the opinion of a certain party using direct speech). Most Hebrew verbs have three tenses (past, present, and future), an imperative, and an infinitive. The conjugation of Hebrew verbs is complex in practice and exceptions are common. All Hebrew verbs have a root, consisting of three (occasionally four) consonants. The same root can be conjugated according to one of seven conjugations. Hebrew nouns are inflected by gender, number (and sometimes by possession) but not by case. Nouns are generally correlated to verbs (by shared roots). Hebrew distinguishes between masculine and feminine nouns. Feminine nouns can generally be identified by the characteristic endings -a, or -t. Generally, Hebrew distinguishes between singular and plural forms of a noun. Masculine nouns generally form their plural by adding –im. The addition of the extra syllable often causes the vowel in the first syllable to shorten. Feminine nouns ending in -a or -at generally drop this ending and add -ot. Vowel changes are rare in this category. Nouns ending in -et also replace this ending with –ot. Nouns ending in -ut replace this ending with –uyot. A large number of masculine nouns take the "feminine" ending -ot in the plural. A small number of feminine nouns take the "masculine" ending –im. Many plurals simply cannot be predicted from the singular at all and must be separately memorized. In the same way that Hebrew verbs are conjugated by applying various prefixes, suffixes and internal vowel combinations, Hebrew nouns can be formed by applying various "meters" to the same roots. The Hebrew adjective comes after the noun and agrees with it in gender and number. Hebrew forms adverbs in several different ways. A few common adjectives can use the masculine singular form as an adverb as well. Some adjectives have a unique adverb that must be memorized. Many adjectives prefer the prefix be-''plus a noun. Others prefer ''be-ofen plus the masculine singular adjective, or be-tsura plus the feminine singular. Category:Hebrew Category:Grammar